Road Test: Renault Kwid

You don’t get much for £3000. Not even second-hand. But here’s the Renault Kwid, which is a new car for that.

It’s only a new car for that if you live in India, which is where the Kwid is made and sold. And boy, is it sold – after a few months, Renault had already shifted a hundred thousand.

So, it’s not for Britain. A life-is-cheap approach to safety sees to that (for the driver, an airbag is optional: for the passenger, it’s unavailable). But the car’s platform is likely to be used in Europe, so let’s go to India for a drive.

Talking of options, the Kwid in our pictures was specced to the max with electric windows, a trip computer and a 7” multimedia screen. It still wouldn’t even cost four grand, though.

The screen helps add a bit of excitement to a cabin that’s as basic as you’d expect. Don’t just assume that basic equals bad, though. It’s comfortable enough, and behind two decent rows of seats is an equally decent 300-litre boot.

There’s a no-nonsense styling to the cabin that makes you warm to being aboard. And from the outside, the Kwid has a kind of cheeky chunkiness that makes you warm to driving it.

This is more than can be said for the 800cc engine, whose 53bhp is capable of making the Kwid move about but that’s more or less all. For what the car is, though, it’s just fine – it gets pretty noisy above 70mph, but ride quality starts going AWOL too at that speed so it’s best just to stay sensible.

Keep your right foot in check and the Kwid is perfectly fine, dealing well with the minefield of pot-holes we encountered on a drive down the Konkan Coast from Mumbai to Murud. It did a good job in the minefield of traffic among which we started our journey, too – and despite three of us being in it for a dozen hours, we were all still talking to each other by the time we arrived.

A 670kg car with all the power of a wheelbarrow, and about as much crash protection, is never going to be a goer in Europe. But it’s likely that sooner or later, a vehicle related to the Kwid will be appearing in a Renault dealer near you.

On this evidence, that’s nothing to be afraid of. So let’s see, will it only cost £3000…?